Product Overview
There may be other sailing instructional books, but there are none like this! Not only is this one the largest--with more than 500 pages and 1,000 color photos and illustrations--but it is painstakingly written and designed to accompany you along the ideal learning curve for sailors.
In Chapter 1 Robby Robinson gets you sailing in a single afternoon using just the mainsail and basic sail trim while you learn to judge the wind and your course. In later chapters he introduces the jib and other sails along with progressively more subtle sail-shaping adjustments, until you know enough to win races or cross an ocean.
Similarly, you'll find the basics of anchoring, knot tying, piloting, and seamanship early in the book and more advanced techniques as they become relevant later on. This progressive mode of organization is intuitively easy to use, but The International Marine Book of Sailing is the only book designed this way. Other books organize content by topic, giving you, for example, everything about sail trim in a single chapter. The result is too much detail too soon for beginners, while experienced sailors must wade through things they already know in order to find what they don't. A sailing instructor since he was a teenager, Robinson knows what you need to know when. Editor, author, and seamanship source, he knows how to help you continue honing your skills.
And this is a sailing book with a sailor's heart. Robinson reaches deep into his well of experience to share definitions, variations, and alternatives in the book's generous sidebars. The result is a richly informative how-to mix of technology and technique, lively anecdote and sailing tradition--all thoroughly cross-referenced so you can easily find more advanced or basic details on the subject at hand.
Robby Robinson is a former SAIL magazine editor, America's Cup challenger, sailing instructor and English teacher. He is coauthor of two books, Night and Fog and Sailors' Secrets.
